An Access Point (Access Point in English, AP for short) is set in a wireless network. Access authentication messages and common service messages of a wireless user are forwarded by the AP. An AP controller (AP Controller in English, AC for short) in the wireless network is configured to control the modes of forwarding the access authentication messages and common service messages on the AP.
The AP forwards a received wireless message in a local forwarding mode or tunnel forwarding mode. In the local forwarding mode, the AP encapsulates the received wireless message to generate an Ethernet message, and then directly forwards the generated message to a destination address. In the tunnel forwarding mode, the AP first encapsulates the received wireless message into an Ethernet message, then encapsulates the encapsulated Ethernet message into a message of the control and provisioning of wireless access points (Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points in English, CAPWAP for short) protocol, and sends the encapsulated message of the CAPWAP protocol to the AC. The AC decapsulates the message of the CAPWAP protocol to obtain the Ethernet message, and then forwards the Ethernet message to a destination address.
FIG. 1 is a schematic structural diagram of an existing three-layer network between the AC and the AP. The three-layer network includes user stations (Stations in English, STAs for short), an AP1, an AP2, a switch (Switch), and an AC. In this three-layer network, forwarding modes used by the AP include the local forwarding mode and the tunnel forwarding mode.
In the prior art, as the AP can merely simply forward a received wireless message, when the AP is configured with the local forwarding mode, no message is sent to the AC, resulting in that the AC separately controls wireless air interfaces and user access in the local forwarding mode; when the AP is configured with the tunnel forwarding mode, all wireless messages need to be forwarded to the AC first, resulting in waste of bandwidth between the AP and AC.